ARTHUR WEEVER MELTON

August 13, 1906-November 5, 1978

BY MICHAEL I. POSNER

ARTHUR MELTON was already a full professor of psychology, a brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve, and the editor of the Journal of Experimental Psychology when I first met him as a new graduate student at the University of Michigan in 1959. It was only the second year of his return to academia after having served as technical director of the Air Force effort in human personnel for eight years. Of course, as is typical of graduate students, I assumed he had always been at Michigan, although I remember now references to his time at Ohio State. I mention this because I was neither a contemporary nor, still less, in a position equal to Melton's, and thus I could not know him as those who were his close friends did. Rather, I knew him as an imposing force in the field, as a teacher of considerable influence, and as a role model even for those who were not direct students of his.

More personal memoirs of Melton have been written by Benton Underwood, who was Melton's student at Missouri; by Robert Daniel, who also knew Melton at Missouri; by Frank Geldard, who knew Melton during the period of his Air Force work; and by Jim Greeno and Wilbert McKeachie, who were colleagues and coworkers at Michigan. These writers divide Melton's work into his early academic period

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